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I got a flyer through the door a couple of days ago – from my local Evangelical Church – inviting me to a meeting entitled:’Creation or Evolution? How did we get here?’ led by a Dr Steve Taylor Bsc(Eng), MEng, PhD, AGGI, FIEE, Reader of Electrical Englineering and Electronics [I think they mean ‘in’ rather than ‘of’!], of the University of Liverpool. Wow! Strange, though. When I was studying for my BSc(Eng) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, there was nothing on the syllabus that included either evolutionary biology or theology – although the unit on quatum mechanics came quite close to theology. Is this part of the (long dead?) science v. theology debate? Hey, look, an engineer who believes! But who may or may not know anything about evolution or theology.

Strangely, too, I am, at the moment, in the middle of re-reading ‘Wonderful Life – The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History‘ by Stephen Jay Gould, an oldish book (1989), but still gripping (if a little difficult to my engineering/theologically trained mind) – and perhaps becoming increasingly relevant today. Based on the discovery, in 1909, of a mass of fossils in British Columbia dating from the Cambrian ‘explosion’ of life 570 million years ago, and providing the basis for Gould’s discussion about the nature of life and evolution. Gould is an evolutionary biologist, who sticks to what he knows as a biologist and does not enter into that ‘creation/evolution’ debate – but between his lines about that great blossoming of life all those years ago I read a subtext (mine, not his) that shouts ‘God did this!’ I really cannot get my head around this ‘creationism’ thing. I would welcome comments from any others who have read ‘Wonderful Life’ and are similarly inspired/bewildered.